I recently wrote a column about how there are those occasional times where you just have to recommend a boring car to someone. Whether it’s for financial reasons, or equipment reasons, or their own brand preconceptions, sometimes it’s just easier to recommend a boring car than to try and convince them that your point of view is correct.

Well, folks, I can confidently tell you right now what the hot new segment is: small luxury crossovers. Have you noticed this? These things are now everywhere, commonplace, ubiquitous. As popular as Apple laptops with organic food stickers on a liberal arts campus.

In my column on manual transmissions, I touched on how the only way to ensure the survival of the manual gearbox is to keep buying them. But a significant number of commenters expressed the sentiment that rowing your own was no longer worthwhile.